NH News

12:00 am

Wed October 12, 2011

Bragdon Accuses House of 'Washington Politics'

A minor bill to make technical corrections to the budget has caused a rift between Senate and House Republican leadership. The Senate President says the House’s actions yesterday will cost taxpayers several million dollars.

On Wednesday House lawmakers approved a bill that reduces the number of people of eligible for welfare assistance.

The change would save the state about a half a million dollars a month.

The Senate was on board with that move.

But then the House added a completely unrelated amendment, which puts the bill in limbo.

Senate President Peter Bragdon criticized House leadership.

“The House decided to take a bill that was needed to fix the budget, and decided to play some Washington politics and put on something that wasn’t critical to the state’s finances.”

The Senate won’t meet again until January.

By then, Bragdon says the state will have spent $3 million dollars it didn’t need to.

Bragdon sees that as a violation of the principle to get state spending under control that Republicans ran on in the last election.